Indoor Photographs and DOF?

[gryffinwings]

So I was curious, what is the best way to get great depth of field, I know that to get this I need a larger f-stop number, but what's good? I'd like to have everything in focus but I'd still want the pictures to be really clear and good definition I guess is the word I'm looking for.

What do you guys do? Tripod and longer shutter speed? dedicated flash gun? would decreasing ISO help as well?

Right now I do have a decent tripod and I have a Yongnuo YN565EX on the way.

 

[cgipson1]

Online Depth of Field Calculator will help you calculate the DOF... what you do with it, and how you light it varies

 

[tirediron]

You might want to include just a little detail in your post, such as what you're photographing, what equipment you're using, etc, etc.

 

[Trig.]

like said above , without knowing what you are shooting its hard to say, if your shooting people you cant be slowing your shutter speed right down or youll be dealing with some motion blur, which id assume is undesired.

 

[Derrel]

BRINGING IN MORE LIGHT really,really helps. Why? It allows the use of small lens openings, like f/8 to f/13. At apertures like that, there's more depth of field than there is when shooting indoors using typical "low-light, available-light", which is to say light that's dim to moderately dim, and which requires longer exposures, likie f/2.8 at 1/30 second at ISO values from 400 to 1600. THE EASIEST way to "bring in more light" is to open all the windows and doors, ion a house locatdd in SOuthern California or South Florida, or someplace like that. FOr most of use though, that's not an option, so we go with the second-easiest thing--FLASH. Using a speedlight flash, or an off-camera flash of AC power or battery power type, we can bring in a short, intense POP! of flash, which will allow us to shoot at exposures using SMALL lens openings, like say, f/8 to f/13...and at ISO values from 100 to 400. The shutter speed does NOT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE on how much flash gets in...until the maximum XC-synchronization speed is hit, or surpassed.

FLASH is the way to get a lot of DOF indoors, easily. It's one of the easiest ways.

Shooting images of low magnification is another thing that helps: shoot from FARTHER AWAY, and with shorter focal length lenses, and DOF issues are much less of a problem than when image magnification is high. DOF is very limited at close range OR at high image "magnification". So...there...a few simplified answers...